Summer Thaw, Projects on the Rise: #BIM
Posted by Jim Foster in 3D, architects, As Builts, BIM, Built Environment, Laser BIM, New Technologies, Revit on August 19, 2009
I have always thought companies like mine are like the canaries in the coal mine for part of the industry, like box companies as an indicator for the overall economy. When companies start ordering more boxes they are expecting to ship more product. Our company surveys buildings and provides as builts in both 3D BIM and 2D CAD formats. When times are flush we operate much like others enjoying the benefit, but as projects start to dry up, firms will immediately pull back outsourcing to keep employees busy rather than laying them off. This impacts us greatly. When the economy turns the inverse is true, and firm wary of hiring yet or not having enough stuff turn to us to augment their services without increasing head count. While I might argue that might be a prudent way to do business generally we ride the tide like everyone else. Having said that there has been a very perceptible uptick in business and companies asking us for proposals. More germane to the BIM world is people asking about Revit and asking for more Revit deliverables. A University even asked us after our presentations to deliver their dorms in Revit even though they did not even have an installed seat of Revit but wanted to plan for the future. Yesterday an architect I spoke to said they are now doing 70% of their work in Revit and that clients love seeing their projects in 3D, so even with the economic benefits of working in BIM are real no one should discount the importance of visual communication. This has been a rough ride but I believe more strongly than ever that a fundamental shift has taken place in the building and design community and investing now in training in BIM will pay dividends well into the future.
ASHRAE Issues Grant for Interoperability: #BIM
Posted by Jim Foster in 3D, BIM, Energy Analysis, Green, New Technologies on August 17, 2009
ASHRAE, the American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers just issued a grant to Texas A&M for “ensuring that a common language of ‘energy efficiency’ is spoken by the both building information modeling software used by architects and energy analysis and simulation software”. I have not played around with Ecotect or IES enough, but I know it had required separate 3D modeling outside of standard BIM authoring software, getting to a point of seamless data exchange you would think would be a starting point not the end point, but glad we are moving that way.
The Rise of Virtual Construction: #BIM
Posted by Jim Foster in As Builts, BIM, Built Environment, Revit, Virtual Construction on August 17, 2009
When I first started my company at one of our presentations after explaining we could capture as-builts in 3D, then ADT, now Revit, one of the architects in the room stood up and emphatically said, “we don’t want ANY Z-axis information.” To which I replied, “not a problem we can flatten all the drawings.” But that response still resonates with me, how could anyone not want Z- axis information, how come you would want me to strip all the meta data of an object to just a block, to which I have found out, you do not mess with the workflow of an architect’s office so it is of little surprise that construction mangers seem to be the current biggest adopters of BIM and Revit as they are ultimately on the hook for cost management. With that said you have construction managers around the country opening up virtual construction offices to figure out the design, reduce collisions, schedule sub-contracts, etc. before a shovel is ever put in the ground. This is a big change in the zeitgeist since before everyone looked at soft costs, (i.e. engineering and design) as some fuzzy math and did not appreciate it as much as pouring concrete or erecting steel, as that was at least the physical embodiment of the money developers put up. Getting digital files that could fit on a thumb drive just did not seem big enough. Virtual construction has proven itself to pay for itself may times over through quicker build time, less collisions, better decision making, etc and BIM is enabling it. Viva la Z Axis.
GSA BIM & Laser Scanning : Firms Short Listed
Posted by Jim Foster in As Builts, Built Environment, GSA, Laser BIM, Uncategorized on July 30, 2009
The GSA continues to move forward with the BIM Services and Laser Scanning. Participating firms have been notified if they have been short listed, however, this has not been made public yet. I’ll post when I find out, if anyone else knows, please follow up. This move, with Wisconsin on board, energy analysis becoming required with construction, points well for those involved.
Laser to Revit : Laser to BIM
Posted by Jim Foster in As Builts, BIM, Built Environment, Existing Conditions, Laser BIM, New Technologies, Point to Point Laser Technology, Revit on July 30, 2009
PointKnown website www.pointknown.com has its splash page up and expects to be in beta within the next 6 weeks. PointKnown has developed a system that takes laser range finder data and builds Revit models in the field. Point to Point Laser Technology (PPLT) increases the capture of existing conditions, speeds the production of BIM and Revit Models of the built environment and decreases data gathering and draft time by over 50%.
40% of Energy Use Comes From Buildings : States Adopting Tougher Codes : BIM can help
Posted by Jim Foster in BIM, Energy Analysis, Revit, ROI on July 29, 2009
According to the EPA buildings are responsible for up to 40% of all energy usage and carbon dioxide production, because of the increasing need to decrease energy usage and the US carbon footprint more stringent building standards are being put in place based on ASHRAE 90.1-2007 with some states adopting stricter standards. Each state energy code is available here. Massachusetts had adopted one of the stricter standards and just wading through the stuff makes your head spin, I got sidetracked researching it by a thread discussing compliance concerning a sunroom and if it had to be added to the total exterior wall footprint of the house, and then there were tables with insulation factors, etc. To add to the madness there is the HERS (Home Energy Rater System) system developed through energy star, and the ResCheck Suite developed by the DOE that ‘helps’ with home compliance. Maybe you’ve started laughing by now or more likely crying. All of this is well meaning but will take even more specialists to wade through it, understand it and comply with it. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were plug in components for energy analysis with BIM software..wait a sec, they got that, and then run scenario analysis so you can see what modification or additions you need to make to comply to this new and evolving standards, have the software figure it out so you can design and build. Use a swiss army knife instead of a spoon.
Wisconsin requiring BIM: Could Oregon be next
Posted by Jim Foster in architects, BIM, Revit, Virtual Construction on July 20, 2009
BIM continues to go mainstream and being picked up in the press. Check out this article in the Daily Journal of Commerce from Portland, Ore. When refering to 2D CAD the architect interviewed refered to is as “designosaur”, first time I’ve heard that.
Is green the color of recovery for architects?
Posted by Jim Foster in architects, BIM, Energy Analysis, Green on July 17, 2009
This is the title of a recent article in the Boston Business Journal. “Once the money starts to flow, architects will be busiest retrofitting existing buildings to meet current environmental building codes and industry standards for energy efficieny, as cost effective alternatives to building from scartch,” said Nancy Jenner director of the Boston Society of Architects.
Building Green with BIM : Existing Conditions
Posted by Jim Foster in As Builts, BIM, Built Environment, Energy Analysis, Existing Conditions, Green, LEED, Point to Point Laser Technology, ROI on July 17, 2009
I wondered ho much of the green movement would get sidelined due to the tanking economy, and how much acceleration LEED certified projects will continue to get. Regardless of LEED though going green is proving to be cost effective, so effect on the bottom line are always going to get noticed. BIM allows option analysis from an energy perspective. You can perform solar analysis, heat gain/loss, options to replace glass with low-e, double paned, or triple paned, and run your ROI on a project by project basis. What is the payback by re insulating or upgrading the power plant is much easier calculated with a BIM. A recent article by Karl Heitman in the REournal goes on to say that you need to take into account the “embodied energy” in a building and that it would take 75 years of LEED Platinum Certified Building to repay the loss of tearing it down. So need to refit and reuse, create great projects with your existing conditions.
How you can capture existing conditions in a BIM format? So far, not so easy.
CAD vs. BIM Smackdown: Part I
Posted by Jim Foster in BIM, CAD, Open Engine, SaaS on July 10, 2009
A lot of us have drank the BIM cool aid, it’s smarter, better, jumps higher, runs faster and there are a lot of good case studies out there on how much time/money it can save. I believe this, truly but the bold fact of the matter is that most of the world works in 2D most of the time. Now we can talk, scream and post how this technology is better but the IT world and Interweb are littered with carcasses that we supposed to be better. Not that I think BIM will end up there but what about CAD. I have read a lot about BIM but the fact is, I’m tuned into it and so are the rest of the cult members but what is the market demanding. One is a way to do things better, hence faster, cheaper…check. Another is the constant pressure to provide Software as a Service and do it for free, hello google everything. If we look at the cloud, that is programs and data out in the ether, for example, I am writing this on wordpress which is being hosted who knows where, but every time I type the url: and enter my password, all my data is there, and it works. How it works does much matter to me. So if people want free stuff and want it now, in the AEC world, CAD or some flavor of it would seem to be the best choice to get up there. Why? It can be a much lighter weight application than any BIM platform, just look at any CAD/BIM file comparison, but also simply working in 2D vs 3D requires a lot less bandwidth and computing power. So what, BIM rocks you might say or yell. However, let’s look at some of the benefits of BIM.
File Sharing/Collobaration –
While there is much to like about this, proprietary formats, info exchange, object transferability, etc. the fact it, the model generally resides locally on a LAN, and I have not heard great stories about sharing the model outside of an organization for technical and legal reasons. Some people are working on this like BIMServer, and if you make the jump be warned the site looks almost exactly like this one, not a big compliment just a bit confusing. But certainly a file in the cloud with collaboration tools built in would work much better. Plus once this data is out there it can be better utilized and analyzed.
Product Extensions/ Add Ons
One of the great things about Saas, opening up a platform is the amount of software that can be written for it, look at Salesforce.com, Facebook, Twitter, iphone so one would argue the more open the more better. All though that puts a lot of business models at risk. With the amount of software being written to aid the AEC community, the building wants to be open as it has jump through so many hoops to talk to each other. There is ifcMCL, and the release of agcXML, endorsed by Association for General Contractors for data interchange. However, to write software for the AEC industry one still has to be either a developer for one of the bigs, and you would have to write to each platform. Much more enticing to write for one.
You can’t say cloud without saying google. Let’s look at google for a moment, there was an excellent post by Phil Read on his blog, about Google and CAD, and how google is rolling through industries, whereas Autodesk is focused on AEC, Google is focused on data, and wants you to create it, so they can sort it, index it, and serve it. They have google earth, which by the way you can post Revit models to, they bought SketchUP, what are the focusing on, and can CAD be next. Might someone open up and democratize the CAD platform so real collaboration tools can be written, and added value programs layered on top. Maybe it’s case of one step back for 3 steps forward.
While I am a big proponent of BIM, I also like the idea of open platforms and maybe the opening of the ‘building’ is too big to ignore.
